A striking 63.3% of patients with stage II–IV cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) saw their tumors nearly or completely disappear when treated with immunotherapy before surgery, according to an international, multicenter, Phase II clinical trial led by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The results were presented today at the European Society…

Melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer, can come out of nowhere—or so it may seem. After all, just 30% of melanomas arise from preexisting moles. More often, melanomas emerge from “normal” melanocytes that have accumulated DNA damage over years of exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Although this damage isn’t obvious…

Researchers at the University of Arizona Cancer Center will use a $6.9 million gratn for the National Cancer Insitute (NCI) to look for effect ways to prevent skin cancer development and therapeutic strategies that can reduce the risk of non-melanoma skin cancer, such as squamous cell carcinoma of the skin.…

A blood test may be able to sound early warning bells that patients with advanced melanoma skin cancer are relapsing, according to a study (“Application of Sequencing, Liquid Biopsies and Patient-Derived Xenografts for Personalized Medicine in Melanoma”) published in Cancer Discovery. Scientists from the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute studied…

High levels of the inflammatory immune biomarker interleukin (IL)-33 can trigger abnormal cell growth and division in skin and pancreatic cells, shows research from Massachusetts General Hospital. Chronic inflammation is known to be linked to a number of different cancers including skin, colon and pancreatic cancer. IL-33 is mostly known…

Three therapeutic regulatory approvals in less than a year signal that the promise of the human microbiome may finally be paying off. All of the approved therapies focus on treating recurrent Clostridium difficile infection, but what is next for the field? With promising oncology-related trial results from a number of…

New technology from MIT hopes to improve the early detection of breast cancer through the use of an ultrasound device attached to a bra. In a study in Science Advances, the MIT team found that they could detect masses as small as 0.3 cm in diameter, the size of an…

Obesity has been previously linked to an increased risk of cancer, but most studies have not differentiated the risks between male and female patients. A prospective study of more than 400,000 UK Biobank participants, carried out by researchers at Uppsala University, has now found that both overall fat accumulation and…

As he devises a tiny plasmonic nanopore system to capture even rare antigens and their ligands from tumors, George Alexandrakis is toiling at the vanguard of cancer research. The University of Texas at Arlington bioengineering professor is developing a way of using even very small samples of tissue or blood…

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a fast and non-invasive method to isolate tumor-reactive lymphocytes from peripheral blood instead of tumor tissue, potentially improving tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy for cancers that are difficult to reach. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy is a type of immunotherapy where naturally occurring T cells that have…

Researchers from the Salk Institute have discovered that when telomeres become very short, they send signals to the mitochondria. This communication triggers a set of signaling pathways that promote an inflammatory response to destroy cells that may otherwise become cancerous. The findings published in Nature may lead to novel methods…

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found in a mouse study that bacteria naturally found in the lungs help create an environment that suppresses T-cell activation in the lymph nodes near the lungs—a finding that could explain why immunotherapy for lung cancer often fails. The same immune-supressive environment…

Results from a phase III trial show that the targeted cancer drug momelotinib is more effective than danazol in treating patients with myelofibrosis, especially those with anemia. The trial results, published in The Lancet, show that the activin receptor IA/activin-like kinase 2 (ACVR1/ALK2) and Janus kinase (JAK)-1/2 inhibitor produced a…

Scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), in Barcelona have identified residual tumor cells responsible for colon cancer relapse and reveal the underlying mechanism behind their ability to metastasize. In the United States, colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men and women with…

A new method of irradiating pancreatic tumors combined with chemotherapy drugs tested by researchers at Duke University has shown promise in mouse models, according to new research published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.  The researchers say the new approach eliminated tumors in 80% of mice across several model types. The new…